Bawumia’s Whirlwind Digital Economy

The Vice President and Flagbearer of the governing New Patriotic Party, NPP, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has said, Ghana is the fastest-growing mobile money market in Africa. He says Ghana is the sixth in e-commerce in Africa behind Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa, Morocco, and Tunisia.  He said mobile network interoperability in cash transfer has generated an up-to-date volume of transactions in trillions, from the 2016 levels of 78.5 billion Ghana cedis.

He said Ghana’s considerably improved digital economy has moved critically important chores around the 24-hour clock citing the examples of paperless operations at the ports, online passports, driver’s licenses and insurance applications, and all other activities pitched on ICT.

He said the steep increase in the use of digital platforms is systematically eliminating corruption. Due to identity fraud, banks and other financial institutions that grant loans took the path of risk abatement by pegging interest rates higher than were reasonably required. In other words, the move to introduce Ghana Cards captures every detail about people thus clients in sensitive financial transactions cannot adopt a ruse against the systems.

According to the Vice President, he pressed to introduce drone blood delivery services on his own experience of losing his father due to the lack of critically needed blood supplies. Therein lies, the services of zipline blood delivery services via drones to remote, outlying areas of Ghana. He said this technology has firmed up in Ghana with locals trained to man the equipment.

On licensed fiber optic uptakes across 7,234 kilometers, he said that suggests a remarkable extension in provision and utilization in that sector.

The technologically-savvy politician cum economist noted that the fast-paced digitalization which he leads is to position Ghana to embrace the unavoidable levers of greater development, Robotics, Rob, and Artificial Intelligence, AI.